What's up with this?

[jclary]

[Dads Baby]

John, unfortunately there have been threads about this already. I was stung by this back in December. To put it mildly, I was mortified when I got my late notice. I know we never got a "first" notice.

[Flashback]

Same thing happened to me. I have let my membership expire. The discussion on the forum lately, has reminded me I need to renew. This is another reminder. I gotta do that tomorrow.

[alyssa719]

That's so odd. I received a reminder a couple days ago also, but mine is set to expire in Sept. so I would expect this!

[JimC]

That's funny. Mine lapsed by almost two months due to that same thing. I had assumed that one of our kids swiped my renewal letter, but now I'm wondering if it just got sent out at the wrong time.

Interestingly, due to this, my name didn't make it to the roster (I was "not a member" during the time they populated the list for printing), but yet I still kept getting my Turning Wheels. I apreciate that there wasn't a gap in service, as I'd have been upset about that, but at least I'd have known I fell behind!

I have a question though: Since we have those snazzy new poly bags, and since they have to put a custom piece of paper in there with my name on it anyway, why the deuce can't they put your renewal notice in the bag?!?!?? I mean, I realize that our club is apparently all about pinching pennies, and adding things to those bags costs money, but I would think that by putting the notices in the poly bag you would do two things:

1 - You save the SDC $10,000 every year! If they're sending out almost a dollar worth of reminder notices to every one of our 11,500ish members, that means we're spending almost that much in dollars on these notifications that some people aren't even getting on time. adding an envelope and piece of paper to a poly bag shouldn't increase the postage price noticably.

2 - You increase the Revenue from renewals. If I renew my membership on time or early, the SDC gets my money sooner. That alone would mean that that money is in the SDC bank accounts, building interest sooner. assuming an even distribution of memberships, that could be as much as $2500 every month building interest earlier than it might otherwise do so. Additionally, how many people don't renew because they don't get their renewal info? Those people would be retained, resulting in a gain of $30 every single time someone who would have let their membership expire instead renewed.

Putting renewals in the poly bags just makes sense. Maybe this is something that our board can discuss?

[skyway]

"In light of the recent controversy regarding upper management of our organization, seems something is seriously going wrong. I hate to see this." and
"Now I am wondering. It is kinda like going to your long time favorite Restaurant for breakfast and suddenly finding yourself sharing a booth with a wiggly cockroach admiring your food."

John,

That is one SWELL description!
I'd post this reply somewhere more appropriate, but that thread has been blocked.

Gary Krautmann,
SDC member since 1977, and ASC member for quite a few years too.

[jclary]

"In light of the recent controversy regarding upper management of our organization, seems something is seriously going wrong. I hate to see this." and
"Now I am wondering. It is kinda like going to your long time favorite Restaurant for breakfast and suddenly finding yourself sharing a booth with a wiggly cockroach admiring your food."

John,

That is one SWELL description!
I'd post this reply somewhere more appropriate, but that thread has been blocked.

Gary Krautmann,
SDC member since 1977, and ASC member for quite a few years too.

Well...I often embarrass my poor wife as she has often pointed out that I am too quick to speak my mind. However, at first I thought getting double envelopes containing the same renew request on the same day could have been an accidental fluke. But if it is happening to most of us, that is a serious costly expensive mistake. The fact that the notice was at least two months too late is not as upsetting as the cost of double mailing the notice.

You have to wonder what other money the club is losing and going unnoticed. Just think...at forty-two cents per mailing...rounding our paid membership down to 12,000...double mailing cost on postage alone goes to over ten thousand dollars! That, and additional cost, not so obvious, in this type of transaction alone is serious money.

[JimC]

So let's put the renewals inside the poly bags, and use that $10,000 toward promoting the club. Boom. Everybody's happy.

[Corvanti]

i think this could work, maybe a problem or two, but a easy solution:

i ass-u-me the "packaging" is somewhat automated and may "cost" to pull an average of 1/12th off the "line" to insert the renewal notice that is printed on the opposite side for every month.

solution: above the renewal to SDC, in bold lettering: "please check above your name and address on the opposite side of this page that your club # and your expiration date are correct. if it's time to renew your membership, please complete the following: (the application)".

i'm sure the our editors/publishers could write that up much better.

bonus: not spending postage for the first renewal, the member using their own envelope would save a dime or two. save the postage and envelope costs for ones that don't renew after two months.

just a thought and my $0.02.